theyarecomingforyou wrote on Sep 20, 2011, 14:52:And don't even get me started on Origin. It downloads an installer rather than the game files, which is needlessly time consuming and requires additional hard-disk space (not that it's expensive). But it only downloads the base game, so you need to install patches separately. And EA games still require the EA Download Manager, as they haven't integrated the functionality. I mean, it's like we back to 1998 all over again! There's a reason Steam dominates digital distribution and a large part of that is elimination of tedious installers and manual patches.

Boy, it's SO unbelievable how people could have something against shitty Digital River Storefront #328 Origin!

Though I have to say that being required to Alt-Tab out of the game to join a new MP game through your browser+plugin has to absolutely take the trophy for smoothness.

Beamer wrote on Sep 20, 2011, 15:15:Is third person cover really that much more immersion-breaking than cut-scenes?Than picking a line of dialogue from a choice of several?From weird lockpicking/hacking mini-games?

You guys must have a much more delicate sense of immersion than I do. Do you feel less immersed in books when you have to flip pages? And are these games really that immersive, period? Do you really feel like you're Adam Jensen and looking out his eyes, seeing what he sees, thinking what he thinks, smelling what he smells?

Sorry...after reading this all I could think of was some guy in a chair with a book screaming, "WTF?!?!! *ANOTHER* Page?!?!?! I hate these things!"

xXBatmanXx wrote on Sep 20, 2011, 11:54:I can't recall if I pre-ordered, but I am just goin to rent this on the xbox anyway....I can't justify 60.00 for a console game, as I think the preorder was only 40.00 on greenmangaming.

The Half Elf wrote on Sep 20, 2011, 11:07:I guess I'm confused... KAOS makes Homefront, Homefront is released, KOAS is closed, but Homefront made enough money to bankroll a sequal within 6 months of release?

Kaos was New York based, it is incredibly expensive to put up a studio in many parts of the US in general but New York more than most. Like many things it is cheaper to outsource to foreign corporations both from a wage and tax outlook.

I don't think Crytek can do any worse with the IP so whatever I guess, let's just hope they don't add jungles and aliens to it for no reason. I didn't really care for the first game anyway.

I actually liked the concept of the game, it just had a few key things wrong with it, namely it's length and the fact that it had a tighter set of rails than any Call of Duty game ever made (a hard feat to achieve, you'd think).

I'd like to be optimistic about Crytek taking it over, but Crysis 2 was no Crysis 1 in terms of player freedom, and I really think that is what Homefront lacked. Even when I was hiding in the pit full of dead bodies, I didn't feel that the game made me have any emotional connection to the events. It was as if they considered it enough to simply say, "hey! They killed a bunch of nameless Americans you don't know! Aren't you angry?!?!?"

I guess what I'm driving at is that the lack of freedom to interact with the NPCs and their environment left the single-player game feeling bland, unemotional, and at times even frustrating. It's too bad, as I really wanted to like Homefront.

On an odd aside, the writer of the game was also the writer of "Red Dawn" (as I'm sure most know). The weird part is a "remake" of that film is due sometime in the next year from MGM that replaces the Russians with North Koreans. Strange coincidence.